Friday, November 29, 2013

Yesterday was an exciting day to follow comet ISON through it's passage close to the Sun. I followed the events on NASA:s live Google Hangout and it was exciting to see the development. At first it looked like ISON broke up and that it didn't survive the close encounter with the Sun, but new reports this morning shows that something did survive, so it will be interesting to see what this comet that is full of surprises has in store for us.

Inspired by all the talk of comets I defied the bad weather forecasts for last night and went out to capture another comet named Lovejoy. This is a 4,5 minute exposure of the comet showing it's core and tail. Hopefully the weather will be better soon so I can get better images of this comet.

A picture from yesterday's sunrise that showed some green and blue flashes. These green and blue flashes is an optical phenomenon that can occur in rare cases at sunrise and sunset. The phenomenon occurs when the sun's rays are bent in the Earth's atmosphere. Light with a higher frequency (green and blue) is bent more than, say, the red light of a lower frequency. These flashes can be seen even when the solar disk is not visible. See a previous picture I took that shows this - http://blogg.astrofotografen.se/2012/06/gron-blixt.html. The blue flashes is much rarer than the green ones.

Comet ISON is rapidly closing in on the Sun. On November 20 I finally got to photograph ISON. Unfortunately it's hard to photograph the comet now since it's already so close to the Sun. The sky had already begin to brighten just after ISON came up over the horizon. On 28 November, ISON will be at it closest tot the Sun (perihelion) and it will be interesting to see if it survives the passage or if it will break up. If it holds together, we'll get new views of the comet as it leaves our solar system.

In the upper left corner you can see a closeup of ISON and in the image to the right I've enhanced the brightness to better show the comets tail.

Wednesday, November 13, 2013

Last night I did a big panorama of the Moon using my small refractor telescope and my high speed CCD camera. The finished image is made of a total of 12 images and each of the 12 images was created by capturing 1,000 frames.

In the enlarged area you can see a big rugged mountain range named Montes Apenninus named after the Apennine Mountains in Italy. The total length of the mountain range is about 600 km (370 mi), with some of the peaks rising as high as 5 km (3.1 mi).

The red spot marks the landing site of Apollo 15. It was the first mission on which the Lunar Roving Vehicle was used.

The past two days I've been in Uppsala visiting Uppsala Amateur Astronomers (UAA - http://uaa.saaf.se). Several telescopes to look at and a lot of interesting talk about astronomy, equipment and photography. The second night I held a lecture about my work in their clubhouse. For me it was a very enjoyable visit and I got to know many new friends.

Sunday, November 3, 2013

Here's a few photos from a place called Handöl. It's a small village in Jämtland, Sweden, that has a fantastic nature and night sky. During my latest visit I had several nights with clear weather and it truly is a paradise for an astrophotographer.